There’s a meme bouncing around the political blogosphere that says we need to demand the minimum wage be raised because Walmart. The rationale goes like this: The government provides various safety nets regarding health care and other basics, including programs like Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance and the mandate that anyone who walks into an emergency room receive treatment. Therefore, taxpayers are on the hook for health care for low income workers. Therefore, companies like Walmart that pay lower wages are absolved from having to provide health insurance coverage for their workers, and can get away with paying lower wages because workers can cover the shortfalls in their basic living costs via government (i.e. taxpayer) assistance. Therefore, taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart. Therefore, taxpayers not only can but should have a say in what Walmart and other companies pay their low skill low wage workers.
If one is a statist, this line of thinking makes plenty of sense, and so it’s a meme that has broken out into mainstream media conversations. It doesn’t hurt that Walmart is a popular bogeyman, that many love to point at Walmart as everything that’s wrong with this nation (this, despite the company’s enormous success and popularity, despite its bringing low cost consumer goods to millions and employing a couple million people), and it rarely hurts to pit millionaires against wage workers.
This line of thinking, this logic and its underlying presumptions, suggests that we should go much farther in our demands. Consider health care and health insurance. Thanks to the government, one cannot be turned down for health insurance for pre-existing conditions. One cannot be turned down for being overweight, or out of shape, or a heavy smoker, or for mountain biking without a helmet. In fact, in many or most cases, one’s premiums are independent of risk factors. We participate in a one-size-fits-all, government-controlled health insurance system. This is how our politicians have shaped the system, and it is we who elected them to do so. So, we are subsidizing all those who make less-than-optimal lifestyle choices, and by the Walmart logic, we not only can but should have a say in people’s behaviors and risk-taking.
Consider several risk factors that are known to increase one’s chances for illness/disease: Obesity. High blood pressure. High blood sugar. Smoking. Inactivity. We expect a chain-smoking obese diabetic couch potato to have more health problems than a trim, diet-conscious exercise devotee. Moreso, we expect that the latter will be much less of a burden on the health care system than the former. Given that the chain-smoking obese diabetic couch potato’s health care is being subsidized by the rest of us, we have the right to intervene in his lifestyle practices and choices, and to impose mandates on all those who interact with him.
Smoking might be the first choice for a target, but smokers pay taxes (quite significant in some places) for their cigarettes, and states make a lot of money off settlements with cigarette companies. We might argue that the cost we pay for smoking is offset by all this, so lets move on. Lets consider something else – something that has little redeeming value when compared to its negatives. Sugar, saturated fat, empty calories… Of course, I’m referring to ice cream. It’s quite unhealthy for our chain-smoking obese diabetic couch potato, and it’s a contributor to the greater burden he places on our health care system and therefore to the premiums we all pay. Our chain-smoking obese diabetic couch potato shouldn’t be allowed to get away with freeloading on the system by consuming this terrible product. And, since we cannot trust the people who aren’t chain-smoking obese diabetic couch potatoes not to turn into such, or not to share with or sell to those who are, the only rational act is to ban it. Ban ice cream. Our subsidizing of chain-smoking obese diabetic couch potatoes not only justifies the ban, it demands it.
Silliness, of course, but it’s the same we’re imposing our will on others, therefore we are justified in imposing our will on others bootstrapping that statists use to justify their interventions on our liberties. A politician does not establish moral authority to act or regulate by choosing to confer benefits, or to regulate, or to oversee, or to protect the interactions of the nation’s citizens. Deciding that the poor and indigent will receive health care does not confer the right to manage how the poor and indigent live their lives, and I doubt we’ll find many social justice warriors who will claim otherwise. As proof, look at the outrage expressed by the usual suspects at the notion of restricting what food stamps can be used to purchase. So, if we’re not to intervene in people’s lifestyles despite underwriting them, how can we claim the right to do so in the case of an economic arrangement between an employer and an employee, even if we provide benefits for that employee apart from his compensation for the work he performs for that company? If we won’t ban ice cream, how can we justify a minimum wage?
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